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How does the Department of Child Support Services enforce support payments?

The DCSS also has enforcement tools available to assist the recipient spouse in getting his or her support, like the ability to freeze a driver’s license as pressure to compel that supporting parent to make the payments. They can also freeze contractor’s licenses or seize tax refunds.

Another tool that is available to the DCSS, to me as a family law attorney, and to a recipient parent in a family law system is what is called in income withholding order for support. It’s a simple document that gets issued by the family law judge and is served on the employer of the spouse who is obligated to pay child support. Then that employer has its own independent duty to withhold the child support from the employee’s paycheque, and to forward that child support payment to the recipient parent. So, there are myriad tools and processes by which we can enforce the payment of child support in California. For the most part, they usually are pretty effective.

John Harding is the principal of the law firm of Harding & Associates in Northern California. He practices family law litigation and divorce mediation exclusively.